A few days before I was checking out new phones in store and I decided to give the HTC one a try.
The phone was incredibly smooth with the amazing Sense UI. Except for laggy scrolling here and there, the One blazed through everything else.
I couldn't help but compare the HTC One to my Sensation XE. And I was surprised to realize that my XE was just as smooth in menu, settings and everything else as the one was. Not joking.
Of course, the One is a beast and I am not saying that the XE compares in muscle, BUT, in terms of ROM, XE is fast enough that you can get as good a Sense experience on this as the one.
So unless you are a hardcore gamer and use your phone for that only, XE is pretty good at anything the One can do.
This comparison holds only for the Sense 5 rom. Any other and I would always find a glitch that annoys me. This rom is not bug free, but it is very well debugged.
Sense 5 is an awesome UI. And this Rom lets you enjoy that in all its glory. I put a hold to my smartphone upgrade (to the unholy Nexus 5) just because of this rom.
In a nutshell, Team Venom did an amazing job with this Rom, and it is undoubtedly one of the reasons Sensation is still alive (while devices like One X aren't).
Happy to help.